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Author of 'The Making of a Racist' to speak in Montgomery

On Thursday at 6 p.m., the Alabama Institute for Social Justice will host a Racial Healing and Reconciliation Community Learning Forum, with Dew as the guest speaker, at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery.

During the Jim Crow era, life from the white side of the color line for an upper-middle-class, southern youth held all the trappings of privilege for Charles B. Dew, until he discovered a slave price list, written in 1860, which changed the course of his life.

“When I looked at that, I was just physically almost overwhelmed, because there on a single page was the whole core of the slave system,” Dew said. “I thought, how could my white southern ancestors have been complicit in this?”

The self-described "Confederate youth" gradually confronted his prejudices, slavery, and the Civil War, as well as his family's complicity in segregation, and wrote a sobering memoir, "The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade."

"The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade."(Photo: Contributed)

On Thursday at 6 p.m., the Alabama Institute for Social Justice will host a Racial Healing and Reconciliation Community Learning Forum, with Dew as the guest speaker, at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery.

Dew is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College, and is also the author of the Fletcher Pratt Award-winning "Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Virginia)" and "Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge," which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Alabama Institute for Social Justice is a nonprofit organization with over 40 years' experience in leadership development, training, and advocacy. Its Racial Healing and Reconciliation Community Learning Forums encourage dialogue and discussion to promote healing, enhance understanding, and energize the community.

Register for this free event at www.ALISJ.org. All are welcome to attend.